Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
So, this week Apple posted exceptional results for Q3 or 2009 (their fiscal fourth quarter), showing adjusted revenues of $9.87 billion dollars representing $12.25 billion in actual sales in the period. (The company has to adjust sales for the iPhone and Apple TV over their estimated economic lives to meet GAAP accounting rules.)
Both Mac computers and iPhones saw unit growth over the year-ago quarter, while the iPod fell slightly. The company sold more Macs and iPhones than it ever has in a single quarter, suggesting amazing staying power across its product lines.
For the full year, Apple posted revenue growth of 12 percent and net income grew 18 percent, suggesting that being in the business of selling Macs and iPhones is simply a nice place to be.
Apple gave guidance pointing toward $12 billion in revenues for their Q1 2010 (Q4 2009), suggesting they plan to sell some stuff for the holiday season. Probably a safe bet.
Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results.
Mac Upgrade Company Now Powered by Wind
This is cool…OWC, one of my favorite “go to” companies for Mac-oriented upgrades (they sell memory, hard drives and other components for Macs) just announced that their company is completely off the grid, using wind power for all of their daily power needs. What a great step to take — and how much fun is it that they’re a medium-sized business willing to take on this investment.
OWC Turbine is now online and operational. | Other World Computing Blog.
Fearless Jackson Goes to the Fair
A fun little video shot by JFP senior intern Jackson Breland on a basic Flip and editing by me using iMovie HD.
Next Steps for TypePad from Six Apart
I’ve only just now gotten a chance to look at some of this stuff since TypePad/Moveable Type isn’t a platform I’m currently using. (This blog uses Wordpress; and all of my Jackson Free Press stuff uses Expression Engine.) I was just reading Huffington Post and noticed that it’s run using MoveableType, something I found surprising and impressive. So I clicked over to Six Apart and find some fun stuff, in no particular order:
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A Glimpse of the Future in Midwestern Wind Farms
I’ve long lamented the fact that “the future” seems to be such an incremental affair. As we approach the year 2010, we have handheld communicators, swept and angular electric and hybrid automobiles, a world-wide electronic information network — even books and newspapers can now be delivered over the airwaves to a flat panel electronic device you can carry on a train with you. And yet, it all seems somewhat pedestrian, because it just crept up on us.
So it’s with great excitement that I personally experienced the sweeping wind farms of Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa this week. Driving along I-70 toward Denver and then I-80 from Colorado to Chicago, I was absoutely struck by these large, graceful, futuristic vistas. The best way I can describe them are to reference the wormhole-creating gadget in the movie Contact:
I even love the moniker — wind farm — as if nothing would be more logical to marry up with the soy beans, wheat and corn of these farm-heavy states. (I happen to know there’s still a lot of farming going on in these states after about 20 hours of combined driving through them in the past week. If it weren’t for wind farms, XM radio and the world’s largest truck stop, I might not have made it.)
Depending on the wind farm and the date it went into service, each turbine seems to generate between 1-3 megawatts of power, enough to run 100-300 households per windmill. The devices themselves are big and tall — each blade of the three-bladed turbine is hauled on its own flatbed truck, as we witnessed on the Interstate — but the base doesn’t seem to take up terribly more square footage on the ground than would a large inner city highway light post.
Of course, such windfarms aren’t without their controversy — one being that they require a great deal of investment and management in order to build the farms and pipe the electricity around — which is exactly the sort of thing that keeps big utilities in business. The alternative — tax credits and incentives for smaller, microgrid investments (solar and wind per household, with the ability to sell the excess back into the system) — might ultimately make more sense.
(And, of course, the microgrid would be more of that incremental future-creep again.)
But, whatever the end result, the wind farms are quite a sight. I’m impressed!
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